They probably wanted someone to hold down the fort (to use an unfortunate turn-of-phrase in light of his new team’s mascot) until Santana was ready. The fact that Marson projects as a below-average starting MLB catcher is all the more puzzling.

I actually appreciate what Murphy did there — it’s a step in the right direction toward educating the masses about some of the more basic sabermetric points.

We’ve had the discussion about the Law thing before, and I see your point. Personally, I just wave it off as the snark being part of his shtick; his language is intended to inflame the simpletons, and it succeeds marvelously on that front (even if it’s at the expense of framing the issue as a binomial one, between the enlightened and the idiots).

First, Tom Tango weighs in on Dubee’s idea that Happ’s walks were situational, and thus not reflected in FIP. While fully admitting the idea has credence, Tango notes:

The average walk costs a pitcher about .030 wins… David was kind enough to send me the Situational Wins for J.A. Happ’s unintentional walks. Of the 54 walks he issued, their average win value was… .030 wins! That is, his walks were NOT situational. His strikeouts tell a similar story, as the win value of Happ’s strikeouts are similar to those of the average pitcher. Where Happ did excel was not allowing many singles, doubles, and triples. In addition to that, he minimized this aspect of his game in dangerous situations. This double-whammy is where he was very successful. It explains how he was able to strand a league high 85% of his runners on base, and no one was anywhere close to that.

Link.

The other piece is from Rob Neyer, who takes the sort of conciliatory tone that, as taco pal would say, Keith Law is lacking.

Look, nobody’s saying Happ can’t pitch. In 2008, I wrote at least once that Happ should have been getting some of the innings that were going to Adam Eaton and (especially) Kyle Kendrick. Kyle Kendrick … now he was a lucky rookie (in 2007)… Every team needs a reliable No. 4 starter, but I think Happ’s better than Redman, who won more than a dozen games just once in his career. Happ doesn’t throw hard, but that big Triple-A strikeout rate does suggest that he’s deceptive (and his major-league strikeout rate is better than Redman’s, too)… The implication sometimes is that people like me don’t respect the talents of people like J.A. Happ. I don’t suppose I should speak for my colleagues, so I’ll just tell you this: J.A. Happ, lucky or not, awes me. He’s one of the most brilliant athletes on the planet, doing something that’s incredibly rare and difficult. And that’s all true whether Happ is the new Mark Redman or the new Tom Glavine.

Link.

They aren’t public companies, so I doubt that there’s anything better out there than Forbes. I don’t know that Forbes is all that reliable in absolute terms, but you can at least get a sense of where a team stands relative to the rest of MLB.

I can say that online newspaper bulletin boards have disabused me of any notion I might have ever had that racism is an overstated problem in modern-day American society. So there’s some value there, I guess.

That’s an ironic statement coming from the proprietor of BleedingGreenNation.com

Just saying.

this is wonderful, thanks.

I’m going to fanpost the game chatter